


Gill Hit

by FishLeather



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bleeding, Fist Fights, Gen, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Tenderness, Weird Biology, and it is difficult with my aversion to giving characters names, i spent a long time on the wikipedia page for gills, there is a seperate page for fish gills, trying very hard to get used to third person, weird blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23587117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishLeather/pseuds/FishLeather
Summary: The punch was like a baseball bat against a beer can.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	Gill Hit

The punch was like a baseball bat against a beer can. Blunt as a hammer, a crushing force that displaced and compressed more than it shattered. In its wake there was a rush of air and ash-gray foam before black, black vitae surged from between the lightweight fighter's gills. He managed to stay upright, bowing backwards before springing back towards his opponant. Hissing unnaturally-loud breaths through his mouth, in and out, unaware how savage a picture he made, like a moster of crude oil and gleaming skin. The crowd appeared to him now as a flurry of camera lights, sparks that drifted in and out of focus, their cheers or abuse swallowed by the forced drag of air between wet teeth. 

He lunged with open hands, aiming to grab his opponant by the hair, but couldn't get his fingers to grip. A feeling like he was upside-down in the water overcame him. Both hands flew to his hemorraging throat as the white-hot streetlight went void-ice cold.

The lightweight didn't realize it but he'd already been pulled out of the fight, held up by his opponant's arms, the same strength that nearly killed him was the only thing keeping him off the ground. The crowd's bloodlust was long gone. Their camera flashes had been replaced with shadows and splotches. Their jeers replaced by a quiet clicking from deep within him, a sound that didn't carry well through the air but underwater would have traveled swift and morbid like a black, black letter. A sound that meant something to his people but nothing to the buildings stretching far above his fallen-back head, nothing to the smoky sky and its drones, nothing to the solid weight of his opponant; holding his webbed hand like it was made of glass and yet nearly crushing the lightweight's chest. 

"Let's call it a draw."  
(he wasn't supposed to live to hear it, was supposed to be torn to pieces by a predator by now, why was the water so thin, why wasn't he on the seabed in a cloud of his own organs why--)

There was no more arguing that night. The red and blue lights of a medical drone revealed the vitae stains on the pavement to be flat and paintlike, their opalescence lost through drying. As the man was passed from arms of steel to those of metalloid plastic, his numb hand was removed from his neck, and something fell solidly to the ground. 

Many weeks later, when he reappeared with a scar the size of the grand canyon at his throat, he was already legendary. After all, the bookie was wearing one of his gill-arches as a trophy; a sign that even the piss-weak nothings in his ring could lose a good chunk of flesh and live.


End file.
